


I'm a tulip in a cup

by redbatman



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dean-Centric, Depression, Episode: s05e14 My Bloody Valentine, Hurt No Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mutually Unrequited, Past Abuse, Sex Work, Unreliable Narrator, praying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 18:42:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9780209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbatman/pseuds/redbatman
Summary: I worry that I never really came back from hell. I wonder why, if I got remade by heaven, I’m still the same screwed up kid that I always was.Sometimes I worry I’m not into women at all."Guess not,” he looks at his shoes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> so i, as a single person on vday, finished s1 of santa clarita diet and rewatched my bloody valentine. and then i accidentally rly wanted to write about s5 dean and i produced this sad gay nonsense? title is from valentine by fiona apple.

“Guess I’m not feeling it this year,” Dean crosses his arms and shrugs.

His brother stares at him. “So you’re not into bars full of lonely women?” Sam sounds incredulous which is kinda insulting, but you know, fair, since Dean has done his utmost best since his teenage years to repeatedly and loudly make it clear that he’ll fuck any woman willing to have him, and that he will actively seek out these women during every free moment he has.

What can he say? It gets...sad. He gets all messed up about it sometimes you know, the emptiness of it. Sure, he gets off most of the time, but hell, getting off ain’t hard. There’s a second where yeah, he’s having an orgasm, fucking awesome, but then the moment is over and he just feels kinda dizzy, kinda distant, kinda….depressed.

Sometimes he doesn’t even fuck the girls he picks up. More and more lately, he just gets them off and gets out of there. Sometimes he doesn’t even get properly out of his clothes and when they reach for his zipper to return the favour, he just waves them off. It’s embarrassing and it’s a secret, because it’s just _not what a_ _man does,_ but he’s come to dread the emotional crash that comes with, well, coming. Besides, he’s really good at oral, plus he knows enough about bar hookups to know that most other guys cruising through aren’t really too interested in whether or not the women they’re getting with is finishing. So, they scored, you know, by scoring him.

There are other things he can’t tell Sam too, like _hey_ you know how sometimes I go out by myself and you think I’m looking for sex? Well, I am sorta, only I’m looking for people to pay me for it. Also, the top client market for guys who’ll fuck someone for money ain’t women, Sam. I’ve been supplementing our income by sucking guys off in dirty bathrooms since you were in high school! Aren’t you proud of your big brother?

Also sometimes there’ll be a guy who’s kinda nice to me and acts respectful, y’know, as respectful as you can act to someone who you’re paying to touch your dick next to graffiti telling you _who to call for a good time._ Ha. That’s sad you know, some fuckin’ gentleman. Maybe he pets my hair a bit or something stupid like that and after he’s got what he came for and I got what I came for, I’ll feel like I fucking _miss_ him. Just because he touches me a bit I feel like I want him. I’ve made myself messed in the head ‘cause of this shit you know, must be some Pavlovian thing I don’t goddamn _know,_ but it’s terrifying. I’m so scared that I screwed something up inside me and I don’t know if I can get it fixed up.

_I worry that I never really came back from hell. I wonder why, if I got remade by heaven, I’m still the same screwed up kid that I always was._

_Sometimes I worry I’m not into women at all._

“Guess not,” he looks at his shoes.

Sam seems almost scared. “It’s when a dog won’t eat…” he looks Dean in the face, while his brother studiously avoids direct eye contact. “That’s when you know something’s wrong.”

Dean huffs a sardonic half laugh. “Remarkably patronizing concern!” he breathes, irritated, out his nose. “Duly noted!”

He can’t truly fault Sam his reaction though. Dean rarely allows himself to reflect on, well, anything at all, but he especially denies himself any kind of contemplation about the separation between his outward and inward selves. Oh sure, he tries to make them the same person, set out to at the start, but like plates shifting past each other, crashing into other bodies and sliding across the world, he’s ended up with an entirely new landscape.

It’s not really surprising Sam would compare him to a dog, if he thinks about it. He does his best to project out a version of himself reduced to baser instincts, just animal impulses. The big question is what the fuck are you supposed to do when you realize that you can’t make yourself feral just by wanting it, and a dog still needs to be touched gently

* * *

The angel Castiel is devouring, or more accurately, decimating a burger in his car.

“What I don’t understand,” he asks, between bites of red meat. “Is why aren’t you affected, Dean?”

Tough question. Tough crowd. Dean can handle it. He slaps on a smile. “When I want a drink, I get a drink. When I want food, I eat. When I want sex, I get sex.”

Cas squints at him like he’s a science project. “So...you’re well-adjusted?”

That’s the funniest goddamn thing anyone has ever said to him. “Hell no!” He grins, like it’s all some big joke. “I’m just well-fed.”

He has no idea if Cas believes him. He has no idea if anyone believes him, these days. For one head swimming minute Dean wants Castiel to read his mind. He wishes he didn’t trust him not to. He knows Cas is a soldier, even if one in diaspora, with a deeply embedded code of righteousness that other assholes in heaven don’t seem too fussed about.

Maybe, if Cas was just a little less good, he’d look into his soul or whatever right about now. If he was another angel, he certainly might, to see if Dean is some sort of threat, to see if his resistance to Famine can be exploited or otherwise wielded to an advantage. If Castiel was another angel, Dean wouldn’t want him to read him. If he didn’t trust Cas, he wouldn’t be praying for that kind of violation. It’s just that he wants someone to understand.

It’s just that he can’t find the words to explain anything he’s feeling these days. Honestly, he just wasn’t raised to be particularly forthcoming with any kind of self expression, you know? John taught a certain kind of gospel, a key aspect of which was that when a man has shit he’s stuck on he drinks, fucks, or fights it out. He never really gave any kind of advice for what to do when you feel like there’s a hollow space in between your ribs that you can’t fill up.

 _If you kissed me right now, I’d let you do anything you wanted,_ he thinks. Cas just keeps eating.

In a way, Dean thinks that so far the victims he relates to the most are those two kids who devoured each other. Yeah, that’s not something he wants to do, because _fuckin’ ew,_ but that’s not really what they wanted either, at the root of it all, before Famine’s influence perverted their desires.

They must’ve just felt so empty. There’s only so close you can get to the one you love.

* * *

 “How can you even stand in my presence?” Famine asks.

Dean feels so empty. “I like to think it’s my strength of character,” he snarks, tugging at the arms holding him.

Famine smiles at him, malicious and delighted. “No,” he says, reaching for him.

“That’s one deep, dark... _nothing_ you’ve got there, Dean.”

* * *

Dean doesn’t believe in God, but he wants to. So badly. He’d give anything to have faith, like Sam always has. Like Cas does now.

He doesn’t believe in God, but he stands by his car and he stares up at the sky and he hopes that at least, maybe, God believes in him.

**Author's Note:**

> me, an evil gnome, smacking you with a broom from on top of a shelf: HE HAS INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA WHICH IS EXACERBATED BY HIS ABUSIVE FATHER AND THE LINE BETWEEN SEX WORK AND SEXUAL ENCOUNTER. DO YOU GET IT. DO YOU UNDERSTAND. 
> 
> i lowkey cried writing this. anyways jesus christ when will i write some nice fic again. i'm killvvmaims on tumblr, peace out)
> 
> (p.s. if ur like at all tempted to be weird about me writing dean as gay pls write me out a handwritten letter about it and shove it up ur own ass and i promise u i will get it. alternatively, u could just become self aware about how its homophobic to be weird about gay headcanons)


End file.
